Neil J. RubenkingSymantec Norton Password ManagerSymantec Norton Password Manager now offers an actionable password strength report with automatic updating. The new feature set isn't consistent across all platforms, however, and you don't get secure sharing or digital inheritance.

Form-fill feature currently does not handle address data. Features not in sync across different platforms and browsers. No macOS support. No two-factor authentication, secure password sharing, or digital inheritance.

Bottom Line

Symantec Norton Password Manager now offers an actionable password strength report with automatic updating. The new feature set isn't consistent across all platforms, however, and you don't get secure sharing or digital inheritance.

Losing control of your secure accounts because you used a lame password like "password" can be even more damaging than getting hit with a Trojan or a botnet infestation. A number of security vendors, Symantec among them, include a password manager as a component in a broader security suite. Symantec Norton Password Manager is also available as a free, standalone utility. It's a distinct improvement over the old Norton Identity Safe, which it replaces, but its enhanced and added features are still shaking out across supported platforms and browsers.

You can install Norton Password Manager on all your Windows, Android, and iOS devices. On Windows, it installs as an extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. As is typical, it appears on mobile devices as an app. Your passwords sync across all devices, and you can log in and access your passwords from any browser, if you so desire.

Easy Setup and Installation

Getting started with Norton Password Manager should be a snap. Just download it from the Norton Password Manager website, launch the installer, and click the big Agree & Install button. However, at the time of this writing the Norton Password Manager page only includes download links for Android and iOS, not Windows. My Symantec contacts tell me that "this page is going through a revamp, which will help guide users to the availability on all the supported platforms." At the moment, Windows users can get Norton Password Manager as part of Symantec Norton AntiVirus Basic or one of the Norton suites.

Once you've managed to download the app, the next step is to enter your email address to sign in or create a new Norton account. You use the Norton account to manage all your installed Norton products, not just the password manager. Note that the Norton account password is distinct from the master password for Norton Password Manager.

As with LastPass, LogMeOnce, and most other password managers, Norton Password Manager relies on one master password to protect all your other passwords. This is the one password you must memorize, and it needs to be both complex and not easily guessed. The program won't accept your choice of a master password unless it's at least eight characters long and contains at least one of each character type.

Shortly after installation you'll get a prompt from the program to install its Chrome add-on. You'll accept the Internet Explorer add-on the next time you launch that browser. The product should likewise install an extension for Firefox. However, in testing I found that once the Norton Safe Web extension got installed, Norton Password Manager assumed incorrectly that the password manager was installed as well. My Symantec contacts confirmed the problem, noting that "you installed the Safe Web Extension instead which is why the product detected that Firefox has an extension installed."

Import and Export

One great thing about free password managers is that it costs nothing to kick their tires and give each product a try. One thing that really eases that kind of experimentation is the ability to import and export your password collection, so you don't have to repeat the setup process in each program. LastPass can import from two dozen competing products, and KeePass handles three dozen.

Enhanced with this release, Norton Password Manager can import passwords stored insecurely in Chrome and 32-bit Firefox. It can also import passwords exported from Dashlane, LastPass, and 1Password. I had no trouble importing a subset of my LastPass password collection.

Password Capture and Replay

Like most password managers, Norton Password Manager automatically captures your username and password as you log in to any secure site. It pops up a notification from which you can confirm saving the data or choose to skip doing so. There's no longer an option to add tags or give the entry a friendly name at capture time. If you already have credentials recorded for the site, Norton Password Manager asks whether to replace the existing data or create a new record.

When you revisit a site for which the program has saved credentials, it offers to fill them in. If there are multiple sets of credentials, it offers a menu for your selection.

You can also click the toolbar button for quick access. The list of saved logins can get rather long, and the Tags feature found in Identity Safe is no longer present. Fortunately, there's a search box that narrows the list with each character you type, only showing items that match what you've typed so far.

Editing and Organization

From the browser-button menu you can also click the Vault link, which launches the full Norton Password Manager program. Here you can view a list of all your saved passwords, with the friendly name, the username, and a password field whose data is masked until you click the adjacent button.

As noted, tags are on the way out, though they still appear in a few situations. And you can't choose a friendly name at capture time. But you can edit any saved set of credentials to change that title, for example, "Personal Gmail" instead of "accounts.google.com." LastPass and LogMeOnce Password Management Suite Premium both allow assigning newly captured credentials to groups (their equivalent to tags).

Password Generator

Now that you're using Norton Password Manager to manage your passwords, you can use long, random passwords, ones that you'd never be able to remember without help. Like most password managers, Norton Password Manager includes a password generator. 1U Password Manager and oneID are among the few that don't.

Previously, the password generator was a separate service residing totally online. With the current Norton Password Manager, it's built right in. By default, Norton generates 20-character passwords using all character types, the same as KeePass. That's good; since you don't have to remember the passwords they can be plenty long.

Myki Password Manager & Authenticator takes the long password prize, with a default of 30 characters. With Norton, you can choose a length from four (bad idea!) to 64 characters. However, the password generator doesn't remember changes to the defaults, so if you want a length other than the default 20 characters you'll have to select it every time.

Safety Dashboard and Auto Change

Getting all your passwords stored in the password manager is just the first step. You aren't finished until you've replaced all weak and duplicate passwords with strong, unique ones. The new Safety Dashboard feature offers a roadmap to password perfection, much like the similar reports in LastPass and LogMeOnce.

When you click to view the dashboard, you get an overall strength percentage and a list of sites with weak passwords. You can also view duplicate passwords, passwords that haven't been changed in a long time, or a list of all your passwords with a strength rating for each.

For selected popular websites, Norton can automatically update and save a new, strong password. You'll know which ones are supported by the presence of an Autochange now link; those that can't be automated just display Change now. LastPass and LogMeOnce are the only other free password managers I've seen that offer automated password change.

Limited Web Form Filling

Filling Web forms with your personal data is a feature that's common in commercial password managers, not so much in free products. LastPass, LogMeOnce, and Norton Password Manager are the only ones I've seen that include this feature.

You can create any number of what Norton Password Manager calls Addresses. Each Address includes a full name, birthdate, gender, and physical address, as well as an email address and several phone numbers. LastPass collects a very similar set of personal data. In addition to personal data, you can save any number of credit cards or bank accounts in your online Wallet. RoboForm Everywhere 7 can fill vastly more fields, but then, it's not free.

I tested this feature using a handful of popular shopping sites. Norton Password Manager did place an icon in each form's data fields, but clicking it did nothing. My Symantec contacts confirmed that this feature is only partially active at present. They noted that the new architecture "better supports all platforms," but that filling address information isn't currently working. Address autofill is "on the roadmap as we upgrade across platforms, but it is not currently active."

Norton Safe Web

To install Norton Password Manager, you must also install the Norton Safe Web extension. It's a requirement. That's fine, because the extension is quite handy. However, you'll also be prompted to Norton-ize your home page and default search engine; you may or may not want that.

The toolbar displays Norton Safe Web's rating of the current website and marks up search results in popular search engines. Green means the site has been scanned and is safe, orange means it may be risky, and red means it's actively dangerous. Untested sites get a gray icon, and super-secure sites rated for online transactions get an oversized OK icon. If Safe Web rates a site as dangerous or iffy, you can click through for a full report on just what dangers are present, along with a community rating and any comments from other users.

One big risk to password security is phishing, which is the practice of attempting to steal passwords by putting up fake sites masquerading as, say, PayPal, or a bank. Enter your credentials into one of those and you've handed your account to the fraudsters. Safe Web aims to protect users by steering them away from such sites. And if you open your sensitive sites directly from Norton Password Manager, there's no chance you'll accidentally go to a fake site.

Norton Password Manager on Mobile Devices

A password manager can be extremely useful on a mobile device. No more trying to type passwords like 57esahe$tiswoqa&iCr0 on that tiny keypad! Like LogMeOnce and 1U, Norton Password Manager offers both Android and iOS apps. Enpass Password Manager 5 is unusual in that you must pay a one-time fee of $9.99 for its mobile apps. LastPass supports iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

Norton Password Manager on a mobile device has all the same features, but its interface is nicely reshaped to match the platform. On any mobile device it offers to let you log in using a PIN code as an alternative to your master password; you can also log in with your fingerprint on devices that support it.

There are some differences between the mobile editions and the Windows version. The password generator defaults to eight-character passwords, but at least it uses all character types by default. And if you change the settings, it remembers. There's no full-on form-filling on mobile, though it can capture credit card information using the camera and fill in full credit card details in Web forms (provided that you're surfing via the app's built-in browser). On iOS devices, you can configure Safari to let Norton Password Manager fill in passwords. Android's accessibility feature lets Norton Password Manager fill credentials in Chrome and in some apps.

What's Norton Password Manager Doesn't Offer

Norton Password Manager includes all the basic functions you'd expect, such as password capture, replay, and generation, as well as form filling. With the latest edition, it goes a bit beyond the basics, adding an actionable password strength report, automatic password updates, and enhanced password importing. Still, the competition offers some advanced features you won't find in Norton.

LastPass, LogMeOnce, and Enpass, for example, let you securely share login credentials with other users. LastPass and LogMeOnce even provide for inheritance of your passwords in the event of your demise. KeePass, oneID, 1U Password Manager, LogMeOnce, and LastPass let you add some form of two-factor authentication to protect your sensitive passwords. I don't count Norton Password Manager's support of Touch ID as full-fledged two-factor, since it's platform-specific.

Still Improving

If you have Norton Password Manager because it's part of Norton Antivirus or one of the suites, you might as well use it. It does perform all the basic tasks we expect of it, and it integrates well with the Norton toolbar. This latest edition is a clear improvement over the old Identity Safe. However, it still exhibits some growing pains. For example, the improved form-filling feature temporarily doesn't support filling addresses. At present, it's not easy to install the free product on Windows. And the feature set on different platforms and browsers isn't quite in sync. When these initial problems shake out, Norton Password Manager should be a better choice.

For now, though, if you're not already committed to Norton, consider our Editors' Choice, LastPass instead. It's so brim-full of features that it challenges all but the very best commercial password managers. Why settle for less?

Symantec Norton Password Manager

Bottom Line: Symantec Norton Password Manager now offers an actionable password strength report with automatic updating. The new feature set isn't consistent across all platforms, however, and you don't get secure sharing or digital inheritance.

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About the Author

Neil Rubenking served as vice president and president of the San Francisco PC User Group for three years when the IBM PC was brand new. He was present at the formation of the Association of Shareware Professionals, and served on its board of directors. In 1986, PC Magazine brought Neil on board to handle the torrent of Turbo Pascal tips submitted b... See Full Bio

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